


whatever i get, i deserve nothing less

by Chokingonholywater



Category: Re-Animator (Movies)
Genre: (he really isnt dealing with them), Character Study, Complicated Relationships, Coping, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, canon typical mentions of gore, dan has a lot of issues and a lot of emotions to deal with, herbert acts slightly more like a person, herbert isnt dealing either but in a different way, in a way? its complicated, takes place right after the first movie
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-13
Updated: 2021-01-11
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:21:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27543004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chokingonholywater/pseuds/Chokingonholywater
Summary: In the wake of the Miskatonic Massacre, Dan had lost everything: his schooling, his career his fiancé, his life free from the constant presence of guilt and grief. Among all the loss, he had to grapple with an unfortunate truth: Herbert West was all he had. The catalyst for everything that had happened was also the only person that Dan had left to cling to, as strange and complicated a person as he was.
Relationships: Daniel Cain & Herbert West, Daniel Cain/Herbert West
Comments: 20
Kudos: 53





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw emetophobia!
> 
> title from the song [woe to me](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnAX607zn8g%5D) by dirt poor robins, which makes me think a lot about dan coping after everything that happened

It was almost like a normal day - a normal night, actually, Dan thought. Returning from the hospital to his house in the dark, stumbling for the door and fumbling with the keys, body aching from exhaustion. The sound of the inner mechanism of the lock clicking out of place was one Dan had heard so many times before, and the steps through the doorway and into his home happened without thought. It was normal, dragging himself back home like this.

Except he wasn’t coming from a day at work, and his body ached from more than just the exhaustion of a hospital shift. He’d been at the hospital for 24 hours, longer than any shift he’d ever worked by a mile, because he hadn’t been taking care of patients at all. He’d been the patient; they’d kept him overnight after — well, after it all happened.

The illusion of normalcy shattered as Dan stood in the dark of his home, the keys still in the open door behind him. He didn’t want to think about what had happened a little over a day prior - only a day? Dan thought, shocked - but it seemed he had no say in the matter. It washed over him as he stood, frozen, in the doorway. Memories flashed through his mind quickly, barely lasting more than a moment as Dan tried fruitlessly to shove them back down: the horrible sight of the dead Dean Halsey brought back to life, Hill’s decapitated head taunting them, the disfigured forms of the reanimated undead in the morgue, the blood, the gore, the horrible, gruesome reality he’s lived.

And of course, Meg: strapped to a mortuary stretcher, subjected to the horrors of Hill’s reanimated head, hurting, screaming, suffocating. 

It was as if someone were playing a convenient recap in his mind, offering the highlight reel in case anyone had missed this week’s latest installment of “Massachusetts Med Student’s Life Goes Entirely to Shit!”. Dan saw it all again in quick, horrid succession, though he needed no recap. He’d lived it, after all, nightmarish as it was, and hadn’t known freedom from the barrage of grotesque memories since.

It was just one more flood of memories like countless others he’d experienced during his stay at the hospital, but something about being back in his house made it worse. He could see, underneath the horrors of the past few days, the life Before: Meg alive and well, there in his apartment, laughing and studying and loving him. But the image of her bloodied and still in the hospital bed was superimposed overtop of the darkened apartment like a ghastly apparition. 

It was suddenly all too much. Dan felt the hot pressure of bile rising in his throat and he half ran, half fell through the darkened halls towards the bathroom. He slammed open the door and fell to his knees in front of the toilet, ignoring the agonizing jolt it sent through his body. He leaned over the porcelain bowl just in time to cough up a mouthful of bile.

He gripped the edge of the toilet as his body continued to be wracked with painful retching, as though he could vomit out the memories and be free from it all. 

Of course, Dan knew he would find no such freedom. There was no cure in his sickness, no relief - just the disgusting burning sensation of his body uselessly seeking to expel something from nothing. 

The empty stomach, when prompted to empty itself still further, has nothing left and so goes one step back in the system. Bile is drawn up from the gallbladder, an affront to the intended bodily order. It’s an inherently unpleasant indicator that something is wrong. Bile wasn’t supposed to flow freely towards the stomach and out of the body, instead intended to aid in the breaking down of fatty acids, to serve a purpose, to stay in it’s natural place and do it’s job.

Dan’s mind hazily recalled all of this as he threw up, his body refusing to comply with the knowledge that it wasn’t supposed to be doing what it was. The offending substance was bitter and acidic, burning up his throat and into his nose as he retched. If there had been any lights on, Dan knew, the acrid liquid he was expelling would have been a bright, almost neon yellow green color. He half expected it to glow as it burned its way out of him, that sickly, unnatural green he didn’t think he would ever be able to shake from his mind.

Of course, there was no glow. This was no scientific genius; it was a painful, entirely human suffering, no experimentation required.

By the time the vomiting had faded to dry heaving and then to choking gasps for air, Dan was a wreck. A string of spit clung to his chin, dripping down into the toilet below. His body was covered with a sheen sweat, his nose and eyes dripping from the strain.

He rested his arm against the cool porcelain, ignoring the small part of his brain that screamed out about the unsanitary nature of the position. It seemed silly to worry about something like that, after all he’d been through. He pressed his cheek pressed flush against his arm, breathing heavily. Dan used his other arm, which suddenly felt as though it weighed a ton, to reach for a handful of toilet paper to wipe his face.

He cleaned away the the spit and the snot and the tears, each motion requiring more effort than it had any right to. It was as though this had been the last straw, and his already exhausted body had finally reached its breaking point.

With a shaky exhale, Dan threw the disgusting wad of toilet paper into the bowl. He was tired down to the bone, down even further than that, he thought, to the marrow. Or to whatever exactly it was that they failed to bring back when people were reanimated, his mind offered - a soul, an essence, a consciousness.

He shoved the thought away, desperate to avoid another onslaught of memories. He couldn’t handle another round of disturbing images; he could barely handle anything, in that moment.

Dan allowed his eyes to flutter closed as he tried to refocus himself, breathing in deeply. In and out, slow and deliberate. Even that, the simple act of breathing, was a struggle. 

He needed to sleep. He knew that. He half wondered if he could sleep there, kneeling on the floor with his face nearly in the toilet, instead of having to move. The prospect of forcing his body back into motion and getting up felt Herculean. But the screaming in his limbs from the uncomfortable position and the earlier impact with the tile floor which had brought him there answered his question with a clear resounding no.

After a few moments of shaky deep breaths, Dan forced his head off from his arm, feeling like his body was full of sand. He dragged himself to his feet, almost lost his balance, and fell against the sink for support. Another set of deep breaths at the sink, and he made another attempt at walking.

He didn’t fall over, but each step was a struggle. Every part of him was drained, exhausted and aching in ways he had never experienced before and hoped never to again, although somehow he doubted he would be so lucky.

He’d left the door to his house open when he’d ran for the bathroom, and although he was too tired to feel any sort of fear about it, he forced himself to go through the motions of retrieving his keys and locking the door anyways. He did it without thought, with the practiced ease of someone doing a series of actions they’d preformed hundreds of times before. The familiarity he’d recognized earlier had returned - felt only by his physical body, as his mind was painfully aware of all that had changed - and it carried his stumbling form through the dark. 

He was unaware of what exactly his body was doing until he felt the cool press of the doorknob against his open palm. He started, momentarily confused to find himself outside of his bedroom door.

Of course. Sleep.

But standing there, in front of his room, Dan suddenly felt more awake than he had in hours. His grip on the doorknob tightened, knuckles glowing white in the moonlight from the window at the end of the hall.

He didn’t want to go in, but his body was still functioning out of habit, so the door was opening before Dan was fully conscious that he’d made a move at all.

Dan released his grip on the doorknob and allowed the door to swing fully open, colliding with the wall on the other side with a dull thud. 

He could see into his room, looking just as he had left it. The glow of the moon shone upon his bed, unmade and empty. 

All he could see was himself in bed with Meg - Meg from Before. Asking her to stay the night, or studying, or doing some stupid bit to make her laugh, or even just napping together. Holding her - God, how many times had he held her in that bed? How many hours had they spent there? They would never spend any time together there again - there or anywhere. Dan hadn’t known that the last time they’d been in that bed together had been the last time. He wished, wildly, that he would’ve convinced her to stay the night, or even to stay just for another hour. Another ten minutes. There would be no more another anything now 

His earlier exhaustion was entirely gone, his body breaking out in a cold sweat as adrenaline flooded his system. He could feel, vaguely, the threat of throwing up again.

“Fuck,” he breathed, squeezing his eyes closed.

His breathing was becoming labored, and he wondered if he might fall down. He should sit, the rational part of himself knew, but he doubted he would be able to get back up, so he opted to just stand: rigid, eyes closed, fists tight at his side, struggling to even out his breathing and swallow down the bile trying to force itself up his throat.

It took several minutes of this struggle for him to feel safe in opening his eyes. He averted his gaze from the bed, reaching for the door and slamming it closed. He breathed a sigh of relief when he could no longer see into the room, resting his forehead against the door.

Clearly, he wouldn’t be sleeping in his bed, if he was going to sleep at all that night.

He pulled away from the door and fled towards the living room, thinking that he could sleep on the couch, but realized there were no fewer haunting memories there. Fight or flight carried him, unsteady, away from the couch and all the visions of Before that sat upon it in overlapping apparitions. 

His feet led him to the relative safety of the kitchen, where he used the counter to ground himself. There were memories there, too, but it was manageable enough for him to stop and think. 

He needed to sleep. He knew that, and he could feel the reactionary adrenaline already ebbing from his body. But trying to sleep in his bed would be - Dan shuddered, shaking his head as though it would clear the memories. No, the bed wasn’t an option. Neither was the couch. He could sleep on the kitchen floor, he supposed, glancing down at the ground. But even here, he could hear Meg’s voice, could see her sitting at the table, standing at the sink, complaining jokingly about his empty fridge or huge mess of dishes.

Where did that leave him, then? 

He forced himself to focus, despite his brain feeling suddenly foggy and his body beginning to ache with than exhausted weight again. 

If he couldn’t sleep in the kitchen, couldn’t sleep in his bed, couldn’t sleep on the couch...there was the bathroom, but Dan’s rational mind still insisted in reminding him how unclean that would be. There was Herbert’s room - he was still at the hospital, having very nearly been killed by his own scientific breakthroughs where Dan had only been mildly injured. But the though of going into his roommates room, of sleeping there, made Dan’s stomach flip with a dizzying mix of embarrassment, recognition of the lines that would cross, and the knowledge of how angry Herbert would be about it when he eventually got released from the hospital.

All that left Dan was the basement. The prospect wasn’t encouraging, as it was where the very science that had turned his life into a waking nightmare had all been carried out, but it was the only place he reasonably thought he could go to without feeling sick. Herbert would still be upset with him, most likely; even though Dan had become something of his partner, helping in the lab, it was still Herbert’s lab. 

But Dan’s feet were already moving towards the entrance to the basement. Herbert would get over it. Hill had practically destroyed the place anyways, so it wasn’t like there was anything for Dan to mess with even if he’d had the energy.

He didn’t bother to turn on any lights as he stumbled into the darkness. With his hands out in front of him, Dan navigated the cool cellar and made his way to an empty corner. 

The exhaustion of earlier was back, and Dan didn’t care about the fact that he had no pillow or blanket, nor about the layer of grit and grime that clung to the basement’s floor. He sunk to the ground down the wall, leaning up against the corner, wrapped his arms around his knees, and passed out on the cold cement. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> poor dan he really did have his entire life fucked up by one egotistical short king in a button down :/
> 
> i've got most of this fic written already so i'll be updating again soon - drop a kudos or a comment, and find me on tumblr at [ispyspookymansion](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/ispyspookymansion%5D) to watch me scream bout these movies!


	2. Chapter 2

The days after being released from the hospital passed in an endless haze of aches and exhaustion on every level. Waking up on the hard floor of the basement did nothing to ease the pain in his limbs, but it was the only place he could sleep. He brought a few blankets and pillows down the second night, creating a sort of lazy cocoon to rest in. It barely made a difference for the pain in his body, but it kept away the damp chill of the basement.

But even there, in the only place Dan could feel safe enough from memories to scrape together any rest at all, he never really rested. He woke up throughout the night over and over covered in sweat, scream in his throat and horrible visions lingering in his mind. He was lucky to get even a few hours of fitful rest, often unable to sleep again after being forced by his subconscious to relive what he had seen. 

The daytime wasn’t any better. He drifted in and out of awareness throughout the day, barely moving from his mess of blankets. The small window just below the ceiling let in enough light that he could see, although there wasn’t anything he cared to look at. He had no desire to tinker with the equipment on the lab tables, nor did he want to poke through any of the papers scattered around the lab. Much of Herbert’s research was at the hospital anyways, in the bag Dan had grabbed before pulling a nearly dead Herbert from the mess of living corpses. He’d left it somewhere, between getting Herbert to a hospital bed and - Meg. Meg After. 

Dan tried not to think about that, instead trying to remember who had told him that the bag was with Herbert. Some doctor or nurse, surely, but pain and grief and muddled Dan’s memory of the interaction. 

It didn’t really matter, or if it did, Dan couldn’t find it in himself to care. He halfheartedly hoped Herbert’s serum and research were safely in the hospital room with him, but could summon energy to do no more than that.

When he wasn’t sleeping, during the day or otherwise, Dan stared. He stared at the walls, the ceiling, the cabinet. Occasionally he dragged himself up the stairs to go to the bathroom, avoiding looking at anything else in the house before dragging himself right back down again. He was dead on his feet, only as alive as the corpses that had very nearly killed him and Herbert, had killed Meg. Alive, but not living. Alive, but wishing he wasn’t.

So mostly, he slept.

It was from one of these periods of fitful, haunted unconsciousness that Dan awoke to a sound coming from above him. He was sweating, body already tense from whatever nightmare he’d been having, and he froze as he listened. He strained his ears as he blinked in the vaguely lit basement, hearing the door to the house close gently.

Hill was dead, Dean Halsey was dead, and the reanimated dead didn’t move that way. But there was someone up there, he could hear them moving - Dan tried to reassure himself, but listing out the dead threats did nothing to stop his heart from pounding an erratic rhythm in his chest. His body was suddenly hyper awake, a sharp shift from the blurred, not quite reality he’d been inhabiting for days.

It wasn’t until he could hear the footsteps moving overhead towards the basement door that he finally sprang into action, his joints screaming in protest at the sudden motion. Dan grimaced but kept moving, scrambling for the baseball bat by the side of the cabinet. His blood was rushing in his ears and he felt dizzy as he gripped the wooden bat, struggling to keep his breathe even. 

He moved to stand by the foot of the stairs, off to the side so he could swing at whoever came down - hopefully before they could do anything to him, whoever they were. If they came down, that was.

As soon as he had that thought, he heard the door to the basement open. His breath caught in his throat and for a moment he was worried his weak, unused to action body would give out on him, should he have to fight whoever was making their way downstairs. 

No time to worry. He could hear the top steps creaking, meaning whoever it was, they were on their way down. He took a deep breath and sprung around the foot of the stairs, ready to smash the bat into whoever was there.

“My god—Daniel?”

Dan nearly fell over in his effort to stop the bat from smashing directly into the black slack clad legs in front of him.

“Herbert,” he breathed, voice rough from disuse.

“What the hell are you doing?” Herbert said, frozen mid step.

Dan blinked up at him, feeling suddenly more grounded in reality than he had in days. Or maybe grounded wasn’t exactly the right term; it wasn’t as though seeing the other man was a pleasant call back to reality, thankfully saving him from the horrible haze. It was just that suddenly, Dan existed again, and so did everything - and everyone - else. Everything that he’d been through, had avoided thinking about, was standing right there on the stairs in front of him in a wrinkled white button up and black pants.

“I...” Dan said uselessly, eyes scanning Herbert rapidly. He looked tired, a little pale, and certainly less put together than usual, but he seemed alright. Dan was relieved, and them almost surprised that he was relieved. He hadn’t really allowed himself to think much about Herbert, or about what had happened, let alone how he should feel about it. He’d saved Herbert, sure, but it wasn’t that simple. After all, if it hadn’t been for him and his reckless experiments in the first place...

“You...?” Hebert said pointedly, raising one eyebrow. He began to move again, stepping down the rest of the stairs. Dan moved out of his way without thinking, drinking in the sight of another living person. And not just any person, but his roommate - his partner - his...friend? The man who had sent his life spinning out of control, the one he’d risked his own life to save from an end of his own creation? Dan’s something. Whatever Herbert West was, or could be, to him, Dan didn’t have a word for it. 

And now, Dan supposed, Herbert was all that he had. 

Jesus, it was true. School seemed like a distant dream, as though he would even be able to pay tuition without the grants and scholarships he‘d probably lost, and there was no way he’d be able to handle working at Miskatonic anymore, if they’d even have him after his role in what happened (not that they would ever really know what happened). And of course, Meg was...gone. Dan forced himself to shove the image of her body from his mind, desperately trying to avoid the sickness that always came with that memory. 

With school, his career, and his fiance lost all in one fell swoop, Dan realized, it was true: Herbert West was all he had. The catalyst for all that loss was also the only person, the only thing at all, that Dan had left to cling to. 

As much as he could blame Herbert, and he did, he was also fond of him. He was...if not his friend, then his something. He was an egomaniacal genius and often a huge asshole, sure, but there was also a bond between them, and those rare moments where Herbert acted human gave Dan a glimpse at someone who he genuinely wanted to know and spend time with. The dizzying combination of emotions he’d always experienced about his roommate was only made stronger by the realization that this complicated relationship was the only thing left standing in Dan’s life. 

The though made him drop the bat, feeling dizzy and unsteady in his feet.

At the sound of the wood hitting the floor, Herbert turned to look at him. His expression shifted into one of rare concern as he gave Dan a quick once over. Dan didn’t want to think about what Herbert was seeing; he himself hadn’t looked in a mirror, let alone done anything to take care of himself, in days.

“Dan?” Herbert asked, voice almost tentative. He took a few awkward steps towards Dan, looking like each one hurt him. 

“Dan,” he repeated when Dan just stared blankly at him.

“Are you alright? Are you - are you going to pa—agh!” Herbert let out a small, pained sound as Dan nearly collapsed onto him, taking a few lurching steps to meet him in the middle of the space between them.

Dan hadn’t planned to move towards Herbert, but it had all become to much - the grief, the ghastly memory, the realization that his life was all but over and the man in front of him was the only part of Before (if you could include Herbert in the before; Dan though maybe Herbert’s arrival at Miskatonic was when Before became After) that was left. So he fell into him, unbalancing the other man, who hissed in pain at the weight and impact.

“Daniel—“ Hebert said through gritted teeth, and Dan could hear both the admonishment and the unasked question: are you okay?

“I’m fine,” Dan mumbled, knowing like it was a lie, knowing Herbert knew it was a lie. “Sorry,” he added, arms loosening around Herbert’s body. Herbert’s own arms were awkward and stiff at his sides; he had clearly anticipated this embrace even less than Dan had. It wasn’t that they were strangers to casual touch, exactly - working together meant that the casual hand on a shoulder or guiding touch had become normal - but they’d never exactly been physically affectionate. Herbert had never been affectionate at all, really, at least not in any way that normal people would recognize it. Dan had learned to, though maybe it was wishful thinking and an overestimate of Herbert’s humanity. 

“Oh, you’re fine, are you?” Herbert replied sarcastically, pulling Dan out of his thought.

He felt a sudden rush of embarrassment. He should move away, he knew - should apologize, give some excuse other than “I realized you’re all I have even though I don’t know if I hate you, and also that I have been going insane here alone and seeing and touching another human being has suddenly made me feel real for the first time in days”, which was both wordy and mortifying. But Dan wanted to feel grounded for just another moment, to feel the warmth of Herbert’s smaller frame in his grip - tangibly alive, heart beating loudly and strongly enough in his chest that Dan could almost hear it, chest rising and falling as he breathed in and out. He was alive, despite everything, and that - that meant something to Dan. It had to, after all he had lost, and he just wanted, needed, to be sure that it was real.

After allowing himself another moment and with an apology already crawling out of his mouth, Dan was shocked to feel Herbert’s arms gingerly move to wrap around him, resting on his back. 

“I’m fine, Daniel,” Herbert said, in the softest voice Dan had ever heard come out of his often cruel mouth. It was as though he’d sensed Dan’s irrational need to feel that Herbert had really survived, and was granting him this small olive branch of an embrace without any of his usual sharp quips.

Dan let out a slow exhale and sunk slightly into Herbert, feeling his arms tighten around him as though preparing to hold Dan up, should he be about to lose consciousness. Dan wondered if this was all for his benefit, indulging him as he was clearly unwell, or if there was some part of Herbert that needed to be grounded, too. That needed to know he himself had survived - and that Dan had.

After a short stretch of time, Dan dropped his arms. Herbert followed his lead, though he dragged one hand up to Dan’s shoulder and gave a reassuring squeeze before fully stepping back from him. 

“Have you been sleeping down here?” Herbert asked, as though nothing unusual had just happened.

“What?” Dan replied stupidly, still feeling a bit off balance.

“The blankets,” Herbert said, voice cool in the way it was when he talked about scientific theory. “The pillows. The fact that you’ve still got marks on your face from being asleep, and your hair is...well,” he finished, shrugging. 

Dan felt suddenly self conscious. “Uh. Yeah. Yeah, I have.” 

He wasn’t sure he wanted to explain, but Herbert didn’t seem to be in any rush to fill the awkward gap in the conversation. Instead, he stared at Dan expectantly from under the wire frames of his glasses, waiting for him to speak. As always, Dan gave in first.

“It’s...too hard to sleep anywhere else,” he said, each word difficult. “It’s like - she’s everywhere, Herbert,” he added quietly, voice uneven. 

“Mm,” Herbert hummed. “I see.”

Dan didn’t know what he’d been expecting - of course Herbert reacted in the same detached way he always did. Clearly, Dan had been reading far too much into what level of understanding, of humanity, Herbert was experiencing during their unexpected hug. He was suddenly angry, angry about it all.

“That’s all? You see?” Dan demanded.

Herbert looked up from the papers he’s been sifting through on one of the lab tables, expression unbothered.

“I don’t know what you want me to say about that, Daniel,” he said, plainly, as though Dan were a child. “You can sleep wherever you please,” he added, as though that was the part of Dan’s explanation that he desperately wanted Herbert to address. 

“I don’t need your - your permission,” Dan said, stumbling through his words.

“Of course,” Herbert said, placating. 

Dan wanted to say something else - to curse Herbert out, maybe, to start yelling, to ask if the other man had any sort of feeling in his chest or any ounce of compassion or regret or anything to offer when Dan was so clearly in horrible pain. He’d grown used to Herbert’s coolness, the way the emotions that he did have bubbled so far below the surface they were nearly imperceptible, though Dan had learned how to spot them. But even so, once the anger had appeared, it suddenly felt all consuming, and Dan was on the verge of doing something - anything - to let it out when Herbert spoke again.

“Go take a shower, Dan.” He was looking at his work again, or what was left of it. It was a clear dismissal, and Dan opened his mouth to fight about it when Herbert added, “You’ll feel better.”

Dan’s jaw snapped shut, torn. He was still angry at Herbert, at the coldness, at this obvious dismissal, and yet it was also on some level the way that Herbert showed that small amount of care; after all, he was right. Dan hadn’t showered in days, and the grime of the basement had combined with days of sweat to cling to his skin in an unpleasant way. He just hadn’t had the energy to shower despite the unpleasantness, couldn’t find it in himself to care on his own.

“Fine,” Dan snapped back, finally. He turned and dragged himself up the stairs, body aching, and slammed the door closed behind him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am once again saying poor dan....ive got the next chapter of this just about written so hopefully itll be up in the next few days!!
> 
> come find me at ispyspookymansion on tumblr if you want to; comments and kudos here are super appreciated too :')


	3. Chapter 3

By the time Dan got out of the shower, he did feel marginally better. The hot water had cleaned away the layer of disgusting residue that had appeared over his days stuck in that hazy place, and had also soothed his aching muscles. He dried himself off gently, taking care not to disrupt any of his healing injuries. When he grabbed for his clothes, he became suddenly aware of how rank they had become after several days of wear. 

Dan grimaced and dropped the offending shirt, wrapping himself up with his towel. He already had his hand on the doorknob when the reality of the present caught up with him. 

Getting fresh clothes would require going into his bedroom, something Dan had been - like many things - steadfastly avoiding for the several days since he first arrived home. Just the thought was enough to make his stomach drop uncomfortably, and he pulled his hand away from the doorknob as if he’d been scalded. 

“Fuck,” he groaned miserably, wanting to beat his head against the wall. Maybe that would stop the panic and the memories that threatened to overtake him, that kept him from doing something as simple as going into his own goddamn bedroom.

Instead of smashing his skull against the tile, Dan turned away from the door and stepped in front of the sink. He gripped the basin with both hands, eyes closed. 

“Deep breaths, Dan,” he murmured quietly, trying to step back from the edge of the mental cliff he felt so precariously balanced on lately. He knew, reasonably, that it had only been a few days. Of course, he was still in rough shape. That didn’t make him feel any less pathetic, standing there, reminding himself to breathe and afraid of his own home. 

He cracked opened his eyes and accidentally caught his reflection’s gaze in the mirror.

He didn’t look good, and that was being generous. Dan leaned towards the mirror, peering blankly at his own face in the glass; he was sure that the shower had helped, but he still looked like someone who had nearly died, had their entire life destroyed, and - more immediately - had slept on the floor of a basement for three days. His face was slightly flushed from the heat of the shower, but he was pale under the light pink, and there were dark bags under his eyes.

His body - or at least, the parts of it he was seeing in the mirror - was a kaleidoscope of bruises, sickening purple, green, and yellow splotches covering his skin like rot. There were cuts too, angry and red but no longer bleeding. He wondered, belatedly, if any of them would scar. He thought the doctors had told him that a cut on his back had needed stitches, and judging by the pain just above his left shoulder blade, this seemed to be the truth. That one would definitely leave a mark.

Dan sighed, watching his battered form sink slightly with the exhalation in the mirror. If this was what he looked like after cleaning himself up, he shuddered to think what he’d looked like before. What he’d looked like when Herbert found him in the basement, Dan realized with a grimace and a flash of embarrassment. 

In truth, he could only guess what the other man had seen when he’d come down the stairs. Dan had been avoiding his reflection for the past few days, not wanting to see whatever might be looking back at him. Now that he was looking at himself, he felt...nothing.

Well, not nothing, exactly - he felt like he was looking at a dead thing, staring into the lifeless eyes of one of the corpses he’d carted through the hospital, or one of those that had very nearly killed him. He tilted his head side to side, slightly up, then slightly down, as if to test that his reflection was in fact him. The haggard, tired figure mimicked his movements perfectly, and yet Dan still felt a sickening disconnect as he gazed on the bruised skin, the tired eyes.

But that was, he realized suddenly, all besides the point. He could deal with whatever this was later - hell, maybe if he ignored it, it would just go away on its own. He had more pressing problems to deal with, he thought, glancing at his crumpled, grimy clothes on the floor next to him. There was no way he could put them back on again, not now that he was so strikingly aware of how disgusting they were.

“Right,” he breathed. “Okay.”

He turned his back to the mirror and leaned his hips against the sink, not wanting to get sucked back into his own reflection again. 

All he needed to do was go into his room, pull some clothes out of his dresser, and make a hasty retreat. It didn’t matter what clothes - anything would be better than the grime coated ones he’d been wearing, and he couldn’t see himself leaving the house any time soon. It wasn’t as though Herbert would care what he was wearing - well, Dan mentally corrected himself, he might judge, but he wouldn’t care. And did Dan even care if Herbert did care? Why did it matter what his roommate slash friend slash life ruining scientific partner thought or didn’t think ab—

Dan shook his head with a slight huff. Not a helpful tangent. He knew he was just avoiding what he had to do, which was pathetic. It was just his bedroom, goddamnit! 

“I can do this,” he said, quietly. It sounded like a lie even to his ears, pathetic and barely audible. “I can fucking do this!” he tried again, as though saying it more loudly would make it true.

He didn’t wait, riding the faux momentum away from the sink and back towards the door. Reaching for the doorknob, he pretended not to feel the sickening wave of nervousness that threatened to crush him. He was fine, this was fine, he was opening the door and was going to go into his room, and it would be fine!

“Shit!” 

Dan hadn’t made it more than a foot out of the bathroom before his foot caught on something and send him stumbling. He slammed into the wall with a pained groan, but managed to avoid falling over. 

Angry and on edge, Dan turned his glare to the floor to see what he’d tripped on, and froze.

It was...clothes. Though they’d been disrupted by Dan’s near miss with the floor, it was clear that they had originally been carefully folded and placed squarely in front of the bathroom door. 

Dan leaned down to pick them up, scooping them under his arm and shuffling back into the bathroom. He didn’t want to spend any more time than he had to wandering the house with just a towel on.

After shutting the bathroom door behind him, Dan placed the clean clothes gently down on the counter. He stared at them as though they might simply disappear, as though they were some incredible scientific anomaly whose very existence was an impossibility and not incredibly mundane, everyday articles of clothing. 

Although to be fair, he supposed, their being placed in the hall was something of an anomaly. Clearly, it must have been Herbert who’d put them there - no one else was in the house, and who else would even do that if they were? It was such an uncharacteristically thoughtful act that Dan half believed it had to have been someone else, irrational as that was. 

But of course, he knew it had been his roommate. His cool, as distant as he was brilliant - and sometimes just as cruel - roommate, had thought to find, fold, and leave for Dan a clean set of clothes to change into after his shower.

It was a strangely intimate gesture, and even more strangely kind, Dan thought, reaching for the clean clothes. To imagine Herbert going through his things was slightly unnerving and certainly a little embarrassing, but Dan figured that was pointless. They’d crossed so many boundaries, this one seemed almost laughable to get hung up on. After all, it had been an obvious act of kindness, something rare and wonderful coming from Herbert. He’d provided a pair of sweatpants, a red sweatshirt, clean socks, and - Dan was both incredibly relieved and embarrassed to see - a clean pair of underwear. Mortifying as it was, Dan was too tired and grateful to dwell on it. 

Only Herbert, Dan thought, pulling on the clean clothes, would have read him like this. Would have taken that scientific mind and examined what information he had - Dan hadn’t been sleeping well, hadn’t been in his own room, was clearly operating on some level of mental disconnect - and correctly rationalized exactly what he would need. The small, practical gesture felt like an incredible kindness, one he wouldn’t exactly have expected from Herbert.

Speaking of expectations, Dan hadn’t expected how large an impact clean clothes and a shower would make. There was always a feeling of relief after changing into fresh clothes, Dan knew from experience after long shifts at the hospital or that horrible first trip to the morgue with Herbert, but this was different. He felt almost human for the first time in days, free of the dirt and dried sweat and instead feeling pleasantly warm. The sweatshirt he’d just pulled on smelled pleasantly like fabric softener, fresh and clean. Dan breathed the soothing scent in, allowing it to ground him to the present and away from the gruesome past.

And in the present, Dan suddenly recalled, was a roommate somewhere in the house who had done something incredibly thoughtful for him. It was a warm thought, one that was made even more glowingly warm when compared to the last three days of cold, blank loneliness, not to mention all that had directly preceded it. 

Fully dressed and feeling like maybe he was prepared to at least attempt to be a person, Dan resolved to go find Herbert and thank him. He picked up his dirty clothes and turned back to the bathroom door, soothing the panic that began to bubble up again by reminding himself that he didn’t have to go anywhere except the basement, if he didn’t want to. The hallways was empty when he stepped out, no further surprised awaiting him as he walked towards his bedroom. He only went near enough to his looming door to toss the dirty clothes in a pile on the ground outside - not a sort of mess he would usually abide by, but there was no way he was going any nearer to the offending part of the house.

That done, Dan doubled back down the hall, feeling better with each step away from his room and all it symbolized.

“Herbert?” Dan called tentatively, padding through the quiet house. 

There was no response. Pausing in the space between the kitchen and the living room, Dan strained to pick out any noise in the silence that might indicate where exactly the house’s other occupant was. After hearing nothing for a few moments, he decided just to check the basement. After all, that was typically where Herbert spent his time - there or his room, but if he was resting (unlikely, Dan knew), Dan didn’t want to wake him. 

Just as Dan was turning towards the basement door, something in the kitchen caught his eye. There on the counter, just barely visible through the doorway from where Dan stood, was a glass that he was almost certain hadn’t been there before. The brief idea that it was Herbert’s and maybe he was asleep at the kitchen table - or the possibility that something else had happened to him - sent Dan’s feet on a detour into the room. 

Upon entering the room, Dan could see that it wasn’t just a glass that had appeared on the counter while he’d been in the shower: there was also a plate, upon which sat a sandwich. This made the anxious feeling in Dan’s gut grow into an uncomfortable almost-nausea, as it seemed even stranger that Herbert was nowhere to be found if there clearly had been some sort of plan to eat.

Had something actually happened? What had made his roommate suddenly disappear after making - Dan glanced at the clock and decided that four in the afternoon was more lunch than dinner - lunch? Had someone broken in? Was Hill somehow still alive - oh, god, did Dan need to go find Herbert, was he in danger, was—

Dan stopped in front of the counter, mind reeling. It took a few moments of this blinding panic before he even noticed the small scrap of paper tucked under the glass.

It was just a scrap of lined paper, ripped hastily from a notebook. Dan rushed to unfold it with wild eyes.

“Oh,” he breathed, tension melting away from his shoulders as the frantic anxious rush in his head silenced. There were only a few words scrawled on the paper in blue ink, and Dan read them several times.

“You need to eat - H”.

Even if the note hadn’t been, endearingly, signed with an initial, Dan would’ve recognized Herbert’s handwriting easily. What was less familiar was the content of the note. 

“You need to eat.” That was Dan’s line, not Herbert’s. How many times had Dan said that exact thing? Since they’d - become friends - started working together - become partners? Whatever the term should be, it had become a regular occurrence since they started spending almost all their time together for Dan to remind Herbert to eat. The other man was one of the most genius people Dan had ever met, but he was also one of the stupidest when it came to performing basic human tasks of survival.

So for Herbert to have turned the tables in that way was - well, it was surprising, to say the least. Again, Dan was surprised that Herbert had done something so thoughtful, though it wasn’t exactly the first time in this case - after Dean Halsey’s death (the first time), Herbert had insisted that Dan eat something to help him overcome his shock. He hadn’t been in any state to really think about the act of kindness for what it was at that point - in fact, he couldn’t even remember if he’d actually eaten the sandwich Herbert had placed before him, or if everything had gone to shit before he’d had the chance. 

Seeing the sandwich made Dan suddenly, painfully aware of the fact that he hadn’t eaten anything since he’d been released from the hospital days ago. That was, in retrospect, probably a large part of why he felt like such shit. He wondered if this was how Herbert felt when he went days too obsessed with work to eat, when Dan wasn’t around or wasn’t aware enough to remind him that he had to.

Dan hummed slightly, grabbing the glass and the plate and moving for the table. He sat down, suddenly ravenous now that he was aware of how long it had been since he’d eaten. 

It took an immense amount of effort not to inhale the sandwich, but Dan knew he would probably make himself sick if he ate too fast. The memory of throwing up bile the first night he returned home was still fresh enough in his kind to keep him cautious, so he turned his mind elsewhere in order to keep his attention occupied while he ate at a slower pace.

He took a measured bite and chewed deliberately - peanut butter and jelly had never tasted more delicious than it did in that moment. Dan almost grinned at the taste of the stupid raspberry jelly Herbert insisted on, claiming it was superior to both grape and strawberry jelly. It didn’t much matter to Dan, and he’d figured that it might make it easier to get Herbert to eat, so he’d acquiesced (as always) and only bought raspberry jelly from then on.

Herbert. Right.

Dan didn’t know what exactly to make of the uncharacteristic acts of kindness. He’d never known Herbert to be intentionally unkind to him, though he certainly _could_ be cruel, so it made Dan wonder if the acts were some sort of way for Herbert to apologize without lowering himself to an actual apology, of attempting to even the scales in that rational, removed way he did everything else.

First the clothes, then the sandwich...it was as though they’d switched roles in a sense, and it was Dan who needed to be helped through basic human function. He wondered briefly if he’d rubbed off on Herbert in that way, or if the other man would’ve done this on his own had Dan never made the effort for him, over and over again. The possibility that he was making Herbert West into someone who made lunches, who left thoughtful if clinical notes, who neatly folded fresh clothes...well, that might have been one of the more impressive feats of Dan’s life. 

Housebreaking him, Meg would’ve joked.

The memory sent a sudden, painful jolt of reality through Dan. 

Right. 

The sort of fond amusement Dan had been experiencing considering Herbert’s uncharacteristic thoughtfulness soured. This was his fault, after all - his stupid experiments, his ego fueled obsession, his antagonism of Hill…

Dan was angry with Herbert for all that he’d suffered and lost, but was surprised to find that it wasn’t as simple as that. His mind felt clearer than it had in days, but only in the sense that the haze he’d been living in had lifted. His thoughts and feelings about all that occurred, and especially about the man responsible for dragging him into it all, were nothing short of overwhelmingly muddled. 

It should be easy to blame Herbert, Dan thought bitterly. He _did_ blame him, but only to an extent; there was a part of him that couldn’t justify actually placing all the blame on his roommate, his friend. After all, it had never been Herbert’s aim to - for Meg - that she...Dan grimaced, swallowing a bite of sandwich like a mouthful of wet cement.

Herbert hadn’t planned for what had happened, Dan simplified in his mind. In spite of Herbert’s petulant, sometimes cruel nature, and the way that he and Meg hadn’t exactly gotten along, Dan knew he never intended for harm to come to her, or Dan, or himself, ultimately. He’d very nearly died as well, and had been attacked and stolen from by Hill. Clearly, things had taken an unexpected turn for the worst that none of them could’ve predicted. None of them could have known just how vile Hill was, and the lengths he would go to for his own satisfaction.

Thinking about Hill was much less muddled in Dan’s mind - his disgusting and absolutely intentional behavior made Herbert’s ignorant harm look tame by comparison. And while Dan still absolutely did lay some of the blame at Herbert’s feet, he didn’t find that he hated him in the way that he hated Hill for what had happened. 

This shouldn’t have been any sort of confusing revelation, seeing as Dan had risked his life to help Herbert escape the morgue, pulling him into the hall and to the elevator. Meg hadn’t been the only one Dan had scooped up and carried to a hospital bed; as doctors had swarmed around her, he’d doubled back to pick up Herbert, who’d lost consciousness at some point during the ordeal. He remembered that there had something so horribly human about seeing Herbert unconscious, glasses missing from his pale face, covered in blood. He’d carried him to the next closest bed and placed him down, allowing the doctors to take over as he shoved his way back towards Meg. Not that it had mattered…

So even in the moment, Dan mused, he hadn’t hated Herbert West. Leaving him there to die had never been an option, just like turning him in to the police had never been a real option, despite anything Dan had said to the contrary. He didn’t know why, as there was no shortage of rational reason for him to have Herbert admitted to an institution somewhere and kept under lock and key, far away from any syringes or lab equipment. 

But there was just something about West, some sort of deranged magnetism in his absolute self assuredness, his total dedication to conquering the impossible, that kept Dan from ever seriously considering turning him in or even simply turning him away. Dan had been swept up in it from the start. It was intoxicating to be caught in the laser focused whirlwind of his theories and experimentation - Dan had felt like he was doing something that mattered more than anything else he’d ever done or would ever do, and in a way, that was likely true. He didn’t aspire to best god or death in the way that Herbert did, but to be at the right hand of that kind of madness (which proved not to be as mad as it sounded) had been impossible for Dan to turn down. And besides, the possibilities of their work as a tool to help people, to _save_ people…

It was a madness that Dan only recognized when he was alone, or when Meg had pointed it out to him and tried to convince him to leave it all alone. But even then, away from whatever egomaniacal magnetic charm Herbert had, Dan wasn’t able to break off the work. 

There was a quiet hiss of a voice in his mind, one that he recognized as his own but distorted in a way that made his skin crawl.

“You can’t leave the work alone,” it whispered, “because it’s not about helping others. It never has been. You can judge him all you want, but at the end of the day, you’re just as egotistical as he is - you’re just lying about it to everyone. At least he’d honest about being selfish,” it said, and Dan felt ill.

He’d had the thought before in passing, whether he was really able to go through with Herbert’s plans just because he wanted to save people or because Herbert pushed him to, or if he just wanted that same power, that success, that dizzying rush that Herbert was chasing. It sometimes kept him up at night after long hours spent mutilating human remains, up to his elbows in gore at the expense of some poor soul too dead to say no. It was wrong. He knew that, but he did it anyways - he told himself that Herbert would do it alone anyways, so he might as well try to keep the experiments as ethical as possible, that they weren’t hurting anyone, that they could save millions of lives if they figured it out. And all that was true, to varying degrees, but Dan couldn’t help but wonder if that was why he was really drawn to the work. Was it selflessness, sacrificing his peace of mind and normalcy to improve the world? Or was even his selflessness selfish, a convoluted act spurred by ego and the desire to appear better than he was? Dan tried not to think about it, always finding it best to shove that train of thought away and ignore that hiss that said that he wasn’t who he pretended to be.

He did that same thing then, shoving the questions away. As he did, he shoved the half-eaten sandwich away as well - he wasn’t hungry anymore. 

With a sigh, Dan pushed the chair away from the table. He left the plate and glass behind, vowing to take care of them later, and headed for the basement. 

He padded down the stairs quietly, almost embarrassed to intrude. Maybe it was just the strange intimacy of Herbert having brought him clothes, made him lunch, but Dan felt like he’d forgotten how to interact with Herbert.

He was siting at one of the lab tables, sifting through a mess of papers. He’d changed as well, Dan noticed, no longer wearing the wrinkled, stained clothes he had been earlier, and he looked much more like himself. Looking at him, Dan suddenly felt muddled again, as though his mind couldn’t decide whether they were angry, or relieved, or endeared, or just totally empty. It wasn’t any one thing that Dan felt, watching Herbert’s small form hunched over the table from where he stood on the stairs. Relief and gratefulness mingled with an awkward feeling of not knowing what to say, all tinged with the barest hint of blame. 

Before Dan could say anything, Herbert whipped his head towards the stairs, seeing to feel that he was being looked at.

“Dan,” he said, and there was an edge of softness in his voice that Dan wasn’t used to. “You look better.”

There was that familiar, less than tactful West he knew. Dan would’ve laughed if he wasn’t so tired, a familiar feeling of fondness washing over him. Maybe it had gotten him into this mess, but Dan couldn’t help that he was quick to grow fond of people, even people as abrasive as Herbert West.

“Gee, thanks,” Dan said dryly, stepping off of the stairs finally.

“I didn’t—“ Hebert said, mouth turning down in a frown. “I only meant you look less like I’m about to have to catch your unconscious body.” He looked away from Dan with a sniff, pretending to notice something on one of the papers in front of him. 

“Right,” Dan said. He felt awkward, suddenly, and he wondered if Herbert felt it too. “Um. Thanks, actually,” he said after a beat of silence. “For, y’know…” he trailed off, unsure. 

“Of course,” Herbert said simply. Herbert seemed uncomfortable being thanked, gripping a pen tightly in both hands on top of the table. He didn’t look up from the desk, and Dan got the distinct feeling that he was embarrassed at having been what - caught being human, being kind? How strange Herbert was, even as Dan thought he’d come a long way in understanding him. In any case, Dan felt too exhausted to try to navigate the situation any further, so he let it drop.

He walked silently in the direction of the lab table Herbert sat at, hovering near the other stool at the opposite end of the table. The papers on the table held no appeal for him, but after days alone, he just wanted to be in the quiet company of someone else.

Dan didn’t know what compelled him to ask, but before he could think about it, he was speaking.

“Can I just - is it okay if I just, sit here?” 

Herbert looked at him then, eyes slightly furrowed behind his glasses.

“It’s your house, Daniel,” he said and Dan felt embarrassed for asking anything. He opened his mouth to say something - some sort of excuse or reason for asking, but Herbert beat him to it.

“But yes,” he muttered, turning back to the papers. 

Dan settled onto the stool silently. They passed the next several hours in comfortable silence as Herbert worked his way through the mess, and Dan simply enjoyed the familiarity, and the feeling of not being wholly alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wheeeeee i'm done with school for the semester, so this fic IS getting finished soon i swear, i've got the. next chapter just about written already!! let me know if you're enjoying the fic, comments make my day :')
> 
> find me at ispyspookymansion on tumblr in the meantime o7


	4. Chapter 4

The next several days passed by relatively similarly to the previous few, except Dan was no longer alone in the house. Dan still slept in the basement and avoided the rest of the house; he avoided his reflection, too, although he did take another shower. Herbert didn’t comment any further on Dan sleeping on the floor of the lab, so Dan didn’t make a big deal out of the fact that Herbert began to work by small, portable lamplight when it was nighttime and Dan was sleeping. They alternated who remembered to eat and brought the other a plate of food, or a glass of water, though neither of them were eating or drinking as much as they should be. Dan forced Herbert to sit down and allow him to look at his wounds just to make sure they were healing properly, despite Herbert’s sour insistence that he could manage just fine, Daniel. In turn, he’d insisted on keeping an eye on the wound on Dan’s shoulder, the one with the stitches, and a few others that were particularly nasty.

They passed most of their hours in silence, except for those rare moments of medical conversation, not that Dan was complaining. Sometimes he wondered if they should talk about what had happened. Sometimes Dan desperately wanted to, felt like he was going to choke on the memories if he didn’t let them out, but the prospect of opening up like that - especially knowing Herbert would have no interest in any sort of emotional discussion - was daunting. Dan just didn’t have the energy for that sort of conversation, and Herbert, who had only ever engaged in non-scientific conversation at Dan’s prompting, hadn’t developed any love for small talk overnight.

So in the end, Dan figured, it suited him just fine that Herbert was fully absorbed in his work of fixing up the lab and refining his notes to include everything that had happened. It was clearly Herbert’s way of coping, to throw himself into his work like that. He seemed to be doing better than Dan, but he’d never been one to show weakness, Dan knew, so it was hard to tell what was going on in his head. In any case, he never asked Dan to help him, which was new; Dan wondered if Herbert could tell that he was constantly exhausted. He figured that he must know, or he would’ve sought out Dan’s assistance with whatever task he could give him. It was a kindness that, again, felt both almost natural and yet still uncharacteristically thoughtful. Just like keeping the lights low when Dan was sleeping.

Not that he was actually getting much rest. His body ached from the nearly week-long stay on the cement floor, making it even more difficult to get comfortable. His wounds didn’t help, bruises making his every move ripple with pain, scabbed cuts itching and tugging uncomfortably at his skin.

And then of course were the nightmares, persistent and near constant. Dan woke up tangled in his blanket, sweat covering his body as his heart beat out a frantic rhythm against his ribcage nearly every time he fell asleep. He’d started to wake up screaming from some of the particularly brutal nightmares, thrashing and out of breath.

The first time it had happened, Dan had been dreaming about Meg. In the dream she was already dead on the hospital table, surrounded by nothing but darkness. When Dan looked at his hands, he was holding a syringe that glowed bright green against the endless, dark nothing. He moved to inject her with it without thinking, a prisoner in his own body. But instead of a complete lack of response, Meg rose from the table, foaming at the mouth, head tilted at an unnatural angle.

“You killed me,” she’d gurgled, blood spilling from her lips. 

And then she’d lunged for him and Dan was screaming, the air flowing out of his lungs like he was suffocating to death just as she had. 

He’d awoken, screaming, to the firm sound of his own name being yelled and hands on his shoulders, shaking him back to reality.

Dan didn’t know that he would say Herbert had looked panicked - he never did - but Dan knew him well enough to pick up on whatever the equivalent was from him. His eyes had been wide and almost frantic behind his glasses, grip tight on Dan’s shoulders, breathing as heavily as Dan was after finally been able to shake him awake.

Dan had been overcome with relief and once again, a strange gratitude for him. Scream still lingering in the back of his throat, hair stuck to his forehead with sweat in the dimly lit basement, Dan had awkwardly moved without thinking to wrap his arms loosely around Herbert. He just needed - he needed to feel real, to know that this wasn’t another nightmare, and that even though his feelings about him remained complicated, that Herbert was still alive. 

Dan had pressed his face against the other man’s shoulder, and he’d felt Herbert shift slightly away; Dan instinctively tightened his grip just the barest amount, not yet recovered enough from the nightmare to let go. Herbert had stiffened but hadn’t pulled away, and eventually let his arms fall loosely around Dan as well. When Dan let go a few minutes later, Herbert did the same. They didn’t talk about that, either, or any of the other times that found Dan clinging to Herbert like a drowning man. 

It had been another restless night, and by the time Dan awoke in a panic for the third time, sunshine was beginning to trickle through the window. Herbert was already seated at the lab table as usual, scribbling something down in a notebook. Dan recalled suddenly that his second nightmare had been particularly brutal and he’d awoken, as he often did lately, with Herbert’s hands on his shoulders to wake him, and then staying there to ground him to reality. 

He shook his head to clear the thought from it; something about recalling those grounding, desperate minutes of embrace seemed wrong in the daylight, so he tried not to think about it. It was fine. It was nothing. 

Dan let out a yawn, catching Herbert’s attention. He was looking at Dan with an uncomfortable tense gaze, and Dan felt horribly awkward under it, still rumpled from sleep and barely awake. 

Before he could say or do anything, Herbert spoke.

“You need to stop sleeping down here.”

“What?” Dan croaked, voice thick with sleep.

“You can’t keep sleeping down here,” Herbert said again, as though rephrasing would make the matter closed and done.

Dan blinked once, twice. 

“Why...not?” he asked finally. 

Herbert looked at him with pursed lips, brows drawn together slightly. He seemed almost to be deliberating on what he should say, a feeling that wasn’t typical for Herbert and his affinity for saying things without thinking that landed him (and often Dan, by proxy) in hot water. To see him pursing his lips together, weighing his words, made Dan almost more worried than when Herbert spoke without thinking at all.

Herbert had turned around fully to face Dan and was tapping a pencil against his thigh, a consistent beat that did nothing to soothe Dan’s nerves.

“Spit it out, Herbert,” Dan said, scanning the other man’s face for any indication of what was going on. 

“You...you’re not well. Sleeping well,” Herbert said finally.

Dan blinked. That wasn’t exactly what he’d been expecting.

“Oh.” 

“Yes,” he said, unblinking. 

There was an awkward moment then as neither of them spoke, just silently looked at each other. As it so often happened with Herbert, Dan felt like Herbert was holding all the cards in the conversation, making Dan wait for him to make whatever statement he was building up to, a totally captive audience. 

“Look,” Dan said, just to fill the silence. He pushed himself up into a sitting position, back against the wall, and winced at the way his muscles seemed to scream in protest. The stitches on his shoulder ached where they pressed into the cement, and he wondered if his body would ever stop hurting.

“There! Exactly what I’m referring to,” Herbert exclaimed, using his pencil to gesture in Dan’s general direction. Dan blinked, not sure what exactly it _was_ that he was “referring to”. 

“You’re not doing well, Daniel. This - this sleeping on the floor,” he intoned, mouth quirked down, “has to stop.” 

“Not...doing well,” Dan echoed. It was a strange thing for Herbert to say; it was unusual for him to give any kind of thought to how Dan was doing, as far as Dan could tell. This was probably the only time Herbert had actually brought that question up in their entire time working together.

“Yes,” Herbert sniffed. Dan thought for a second that he was really going to leave it at that again and force Dan to beg for any kind of further explanation, but then he spoke again.

“You’re not healing properly, Daniel,” Herbert said, all professionalism. “You wince when you lay down, or stand up, or even simply breathe too deeply. I don’t think that continuing to sleep down here is an efficient way to move forward.”

“Oh,” Dan said dumbly. Herbert was - well, he was right. Dan didn’t feel like his body was healing, between the lack of food, lack of sleep, and the less than forgiving cement on which he’d been spending most of his time. The strangely intimate domesticity of their living situation struck Dan as he realized that Herbert had been watching him closely enough to notice when Dan was in pain. It felt almost like care, and Dan was warmed by it at the same time another part of him recognized that Herbert spoke in this same rational way about any of his experiments.

“I also believe that sleeping in an actual bed may,” Herbert said, gaze tearing away from Dan, “help with your...dreaming issue.”

Dan felt his stomach flip unpleasantly, beginning to weave its way into painful knots. Herbert seemed as uncomfortable as Dan felt, still tapping his stupid pencil and looking anywhere that wasn’t directly at Dan. 

“What...I mean, that’s not really _your_ problem,” Dan said, trying not to sound too defensive. He really wasn’t in the mood to explain to Herbert why he couldn’t sleep in his own bed, and frankly, what business was it of his? So what if Dan wasn’t sleeping right, wasn’t healing right? It wasn’t as though Herbert had ever cared about that sort of thing before. Maybe it was just the rawness of the horrors he’d been through, or maybe it was that suddenly, Dan was _feeling_ a lot more than he had in days, but that anger he’d identified earlier was beginning to bubble to the surface. What the hell made this Herbert’s business, anyways?

As if reading Dan’s mind, Herbert quietly said, “We both know that you’ve made it my problem.” 

Dan felt a sudden warm flush of embarrassment. This was clearly less about the actual dreams, and more about the minutes afterwards that had been mutually ignored up until this point. It felt like some cover had been pulled off of a wound that was now exposed to the angry air where it never should have been, uncomfortable and impossible to ignore. Dan made an effort to anyways, choosing to turn the embarrassment into anger instead - anger was safer. They argued all the time, but the other thing...was much less simple.

“Well, _sorry_ ,” Dan intoned, allowing some contempt to slip into his tone. “I never asked you to wake me up,” he added, and the latter half of the sentence hung unspoken but heard between them anyways: and I never asked you to comfort me, either. It was technically true, although Dan knew he had asked without asking the first time he’d clung to Herbert’s skinny frame like a life raft amidst the images his mind couldn’t seem to shake.

“Oh, right,” Herbert snipped back, lip curling. Dan felt his heart drop through the floor as it seemed like Herbert was about to drag the wound even further into the open, but he didnt’t. Instead, he said, “Next time I’ll just allow you to keep screaming and thrashing around like a cardiac arrest case! Because that’s such a _conducive_ work environment for the lab.” 

“ _Conducive work environment_ ?” Dan repeated, incredulously. “God, I’m _so_ sorry that it’s such an inconvenience to you, Herbert. I’ll really try to stop seeing my dead girlfriend, or her father, or Hill’s fucked up head, or myself or you or anyone else covered in blood and gore in my sleep!” If Herbert was surprised to hear himself come up in Dan’s angry list of what exactly it was that made him wake up screaming, he didn’t let it show.

“Y’know, I never had nightmares before,” Dan added, voice an angry rumble against the thick stone walls of the basement. “But then you showed up, and you - you dragged me into your—

“Dragged you—?” Herbert interjected, raising his voice to be heard above Dan’s. “You _wanted_ to be a part of things, you never _had_ to do any of it - just admit to yourself that you want to succeed as much as I do!” Dan snapped his mouth shut as Herbert shoved off of the stool and stalked towards him. 

“You can lie to yourself as much as you like, Daniel, but for all your self righteous, emotional superiority, I never forced you to do any of it. Blaming me might make you _feel better_ ,” he sneered, “but you know that I only ever gave you the push to do what you wanted to anyways, to reach the kind of genius that your emotions held you back from, _and you wanted me to_!”

“You’re insane,” Dan said, glaring up at Herbert. He felt like he’s been slapped, but he refused to give Herbert the satisfaction of knowing exactly how closely his words hit to Dan’s own private fears. The fact that he was right, in a way, only served to make Dan angrier.

Herbert rolled his eyes, a cruel glint flashing in them. “Well, if you recall, I was unconscious when you chose to use my _‘insanity’_ on dear Megan, so I—“

Before Herbert could finish, Dan shot up from where he’d still been seated on the ground, ignoring the rush of pain and dizziness at the sudden jolting motion.

“ _Fuck_ you!” he yelled, shoving Herbert shoulders hard enough that the other man nearly fell over, would have if Dan hadn’t grabbed him tightly by the shoulders just before he toppled, burning with anger.

“Don’t you fucking bring her up.” He emphasized his words by shaking Herbert hard enough that his head snapped back and forth. “You don’t get to…” Dan trailed off, breathing heavily. Herbert’s eyes were wide behind his wire frames, giving him the appearance of a caged animal. His hands were raised in the slim space between himself and Dan as though to ward off blows. 

“I never wanted to - to be a part of this kind of horrible shit,” Dan spat. “These grotesque experiments—“

“Do _not_ ,” Herbert said, attempting to jerk his shoulders free from Dan’s persistent grip, “talk about my work that way.” 

Dan let out a mirthless laugh, refusing to let Herbert slip away.

“Oh, _your_ work?” Dan felt like he was spinning wildly out of control, every emotion that hadn't been felt over the past few days suddenly exploding in his chest like an atom bomb. “ _Your_ _work_? Of course, because what am I but your stupid assistant, right? Jesus, all the shit I’ve done for you and it’s still alwa—“

“ _Our work!”_ Herbert yelled, cutting him off. “It’s _our_ work! Is that what you want me to say, Dan?” 

They were practically chest to chest, both breathing heavily with anger. Dan was holding Herbert firmly in place by the shoulders, grip tight enough that his knuckles had turned a bloodless white. Despite the fact that Dan had nearly half a foot on Herbert and was generally in much better physical shape, Herbert wasn’t backing down. He glared up at Dan, mouth twisted in arrogant disdain even as his body language was that of someone bracing for an attack. His usually pale face was tinged pink with anger, tilted upwards slightly to look Dan head on.

“I don’t know,” Dan mumbled, and it was true. There was something almost intimate about hearing him say it was their work, something that they shared together, created together, were linked through and by in a way that no one else could claim. Whether or not Dan wanted that link…that was a bit less clear. It was a heady question.

Dan felt dizzy suddenly, extremely aware of just how close together they were. He felt uncomfortably warm; their proximity had become suffocating.

He released his grip on Herbert - who was left unbalanced and stumbled slightly at sudden lack - and took a step back. Herbert brushed his hands over his own shirt as though that would alleviate the wrinkles left where Dan had held his shoulders, glaring at him the whole while.

“Well,” Dan said, venomous but no longer yelling. “I’m sorry for being so _inconvenient_ to the work environment. God,” he laughed coldly, running a frustrated hand through his hair, “I should’ve known from the start that this whole thing wasn’t really about all the crap you started with, about me not healing right. Inconvenience.” He shook his head. “Sorry my stupid human emotions are such an disruption to the great genius of Herbert West.” 

Herbert was still glaring at him. 

“If that was the core of the issue, Daniel, I would’ve started with that,” he scoffed. “Have you ever known me not to get to the point?”

“Oh, so my _feelings_ , the nightmares, it’s not an inconvenience?” Dan asked with a pointed scowl.

Herbert just stared in response - not denying, but not acquiescing, either.

Of course. Dan rolled his eyes with an exasperated huff.

“But am I wrong, then, about your healing?” Herbert’s prodded, never content to leave things alone. 

“If you’ve really been studying me like an experiment,” Dan snapped, “you know you’re not.”

Herbert took the jab in stride. 

“You aren’t taking care of yourself. You’re never going to heal without proper rest,” Herbert continued, clinical but still smug at the undeniable truth of his words. 

Dan wondered, again, where this concern was coming from (the fresh clothes, the sandwich, the unquestioned grounding of Dan to reality), but he brushed that aside in favor of a bitter laugh.

“You’re one to talk, Herbert! Have you slept at _all_ since you got back from the hospital?” Dan challenged, crossing his arms. 

Herbert’s face betrayed nothing. “Of course I have. Just because I don’t need to sleep on the cement doesn’t mean I’m not doing so elsewhere.”

“Bullshit.” The little knock had reignited Dan’s anger. “I’m not stupid, Herbert, as much as you might think so,” he added bitterly. Herbert looked back at him, purposefully blank.

It was true - he hadn’t really thought about it before the words were coming out his mouth, but Herbert was always in the lab. He was working by dim lamplight when Dan fell asleep, and he was there when Dan woke up, and he never seemed to have to run down the stairs when Dan woke up screaming. He clearly wasn’t sleeping much if at all, and Dan suddenly realized exactly what that meant.

If Herbert could use the reagent - the diluted solution, of course - to shirk the need to sleep, Dan could do the same.

The thought settled unpleasantly in Dan’s mind. As though seeing the dead turn bloodthirsty and animalistic at the hands of the reagent wasn’t deterrent enough, there was also Herbert’s use of it. The first time Dan had witnessed his roommate using the serum on himself had also been the only time, but it was a vivid memory for Dan. Herbert had been pale and sweaty, shaky and unstable, clearly in pain and experiencing withdrawal. Dan had been appalled that Herbert was using the luminescent serum on himself, even when Herbert brushed away his concern by saying it was a diluted solution. That didn’t change the fact that whatever withdrawal Herbert had been going through was so severe that he couldn’t even fill the hypodermic needle with what he needed, let alone inject himself. Dan had done both for him when Herbert had nearly begged him to, feeling wrong and vaguely sick for doing it.

Herbert had shot off the bed and stood straight up, choking down sounds that Dan couldn’t define as being ones of misery or of euphoria. It had been disturbing to witness, and Dan had promised himself never to help Herbert shoot up with the glowing chemical solution ever again, and- more directly in his control - to never let Herbert inject _him_ with it.

But that had been in the Before (or was it the During?), when Dan could still sleep without being haunted by gruesome visions of himself or his girlfriend or his professor or even his roommate, without waking up screaming and panicked and drenched in sweat. The thought propelled him forward, silencing the part of him that had sworn off the very idea of that solution ever making its way into his system - dead or alive.

“I want some of your reagent,” Dan said, not bothering with preamble. 

Herbert blinked at him, caught off guard, and Dan felt like he had the upper hand in the conversation for the first time.

“You seem very much alive to me,” Herbert replied sourly after a moment, but Dan could pick up on the subtle trace of nervousness in his tone.

“Don’t be pedantic,” Dan said, voice low. “You know what I mean.”

“I don’t,” Herbert replied petulantly, not breaking eye contact with Dan.

Dan pursed his lips, irritated. Why was Herbert being so difficult? Dan would’ve thought he’d be jumping at the chance to test the reagent on a living subject that wasn’t himself. And besides, Dan felt like after everything he’d done, everything he’d been through, he deserved to do whatever the hell he wanted with their reagent. And what he _wanted_ was just to be able to escape the nightmares, for fuck’s sake, even for one goddamn night—

He let out an angry breath, trying to reign himself in.

“ _Your_ reagent,” Dan said, carefully. “The one that - that keeps your ‘ _mind sharp’_.” He threw Herbert’s own words from that singular incident back at him, his irritation biting through them.

“I…” Herbert’s face was pinched, and Dan could practically see the gears turning in his mind during the beat of silence. “I don’t have any. As you well know, Daniel - you saw what Hill did to the lab. I don’t,” he repeated, glaring, “have any.” 

“Yeah?” Dan asked, and it wasn’t a question so much as it was a threat. Herbert seemed to hear that a moment too late, having no time to retreat back to a safe distance before Dan had grabbed his wrist.

“So you’re telling me,” Dan said, taking one step closer to Herbert, “that if I roll up your sleeve, I won’t see anything?” 

“Let go of me,” Herbert said, quietly, but with a measure of heat that was clearly intended to sound threatening. He attempted to yank his wrist out of Dan’s grasp, but it was futile. Dan wasn’t budging.

“No.” 

“I said let _go_ , Daniel!” 

“Give me some of your reagent and I will!”

“Why - do - you - need it so _badly_?” Each word was punctuated by Herbert trying his best to pull away from Dan’s grip, to no avail. 

“ _Because I can’t fucking keep doing this!”_

Dan hadn’t meant to raise his voice, but his emotions seemed - once again - to have reached a boiling point. Herbert flinched involuntarily at the volume, freezing like an animal illuminated by the headlights of an oncoming truck. 

“I can’t keep doing this,” Dan repeated. “It’s - it’s horrible, the fucking things that I see when I close my eyes. It hasn’t gotten any better, and I’m so fucking _tired_ of it,” he said, and he did sound exhausted under the anger. “I just want a break.” 

Herbert said nothing, just stared at Dan from under a furrowed brow.

“Well?” Dan prompted, hand still encircling Herbert’s wrist.

“I don’t ha—“

“Bullshit!” Dan exclaimed. 

“Hill took my work, as you well know,” Herbert started, but Dan wasn’t interested in any more of what he had to say. 

“Stop fucking lying!“

Dan took another step towards Herbert, holding his arm in place with one hand while using the other to shove at the cuff of Herbert’s shirt sleeve. He knew that Herbert was using reagent again, knew that there would be those tiny little marks if he just rolled up his sleeve—

“Daniel, get _off of me—“_

 _“_ Why won’t you just give me some of the fuc—“

“ _Because it’s not safe!_ ” 

Dan froze at the sudden explosion of anger from Herbert, hands stilling on his arm. 

“It isn’t - it’s not what one would call healthy,” Herbert added, no longer sounding angry. He was looking away from Dan, down towards the floor. 

“So? _You_ use it,” Dan argued, frustrated beyond belief with whatever logic he was being shot down with.

“Yes, well. You aren’t me,” Herbert said flatly, expression carefully blank. 

Dan didn’t know what the hell that was supposed to mean, and he said as much.

“What the fuck does that mean? Any corpse you find I practically have to drag you away from,” Dan said, laughing in a near hysterical way, “but I’m - what, not good enough? What the fuck are you _talking_ about?”

Herbert let out a bemused huff. 

“It’s quite the opposite, actually,” he said, pursing his lips.

“I swear to God, Herbert, just say what the hell you mean—“

“You’re too good,” Herbert cut in, tearing his gaze away from the ground to finally look back at Dan. “It’s - your idealism, your ‘human feelings’, I believe you called them…you’re _good_.” His gaze was intense, flitting around Dan’s face as though it was a struggle for him not to look away as he spoke. “It’s the very structure upon which your entire self is built. You want to help people, so much that it makes you absolutely naive at times - but it also makes you...different. From me.”

The words seemed stilted as they came out of his mouth, like each one was unfamiliar to his tongue and was being pulled unwillingly up his throat. His tone was somewhere in the uncanny space between a cold, analytic observation on the surface and something warm underneath - so warm and unusual from him that it made Dan feel like he was being hit with a strange radiation. It was the most nuanced emotion he’d ever heard from Herbert, and he had no idea what to make of it.

“The reagent is experimental,” Herbert continued, as though he had to finish his thoughts or he’d be swallowed up by them. “I don’t - I don’t yet know what it does to a living subject, in the long term. I suppose I won’t know for years. But I’ve never been much of a... _good_ _person_ , so to speak,” he said, lips quirking upwards for just a moment. “So if there are harmful long-term effects, or if it begins to cause some sort of less than human mutation, well - it’s no great loss, not as long as it progresses the work. But you’re different.” He gave a small shrug, as much as he could with Dan still holding onto his arm. 

Dan felt ill, hearing Herbert talk the way that he was. It was deeply unnerving to hear anyone speak about themselves so clinically, so coldly. Like he viewed himself as nothing more than a vehicle for scientific progress, the same way he viewed the grotesque corpses they brought back to life. Dan had always considered Herbert to be something of a narcissist; after all, how could you play god without a bit of an ego? But this...this felt like a crushing thing, some level of utter malice for the self that Dan could hardly wrap his head around, let alone connect to Herbert’s usual demeanour. 

Then there was all the talk about Dan being _good_ , whatever that meant. Hadn’t Herbert just been yelling at him for his “emotional superiority” minutes earlier? And yet there had been something so deeply earnest in his voice when he’d said that Dan was good, when he’d mentioned Dan’s drive to help others…Dan felt almost embarrassed by it. It had felt like a dissection, in a way - like being opened up and looked at, observed, with someone noting where all of his insides were and what their function was. It was clinically intimate, a cold flush, an unusually romantic hypothesis that led into a lab report that was both contradictory and confusing. Dan was beginning to think that was how everything would be with Herbert West. 

“Oh,” Dan said, feeling dizzy. 

“Yes,” Herbert said, voice somewhat strained.

Dan realized after a beat that Herbet was embarrassed; it was the most genuine Dan had ever heard him, more than any other moments of openness combined. He seemed uncomfortable with the words that had just come out of his mouth, his lips now tightly shut as though to stop any other damningly vulnerable thoughts from slipping out.

He had no idea what to make of it all. Trying to absorb everything that Herbert had confessed left Dan feeling strangely cotton-headed; it was too many stimuli to deal with - where did he even begin to consider it all? Should he start with the earnest warmth far below the surface of Herbert’s tone when he talked about Dan’s idealism? Or should he start with the way that hearing him be so sure of Dan’s inherent goodness was dizzying, that the unexpected, deep rooted fondness in that fact made Dan feel like he was bubbling over with something he couldn’t identify? Or further still, should he try to address the way that Herbert clearly felt himself to be of no value outside of his possible usefulness? That Herbert wouldn’t give Dan the reagent because he felt that he himself was disposable in a human sense, and Dan was not?

It was too much, at that moment. The entire interaction had left Dan’s heart pounding in his chest and entire body feeling like a string wound too tight. He was in no mental state to attempt to unravel all that had just been thrust into the open; he’d need more time, more _space_ , to truly consider what had just been said. 

“I…” Dan trailed off, swallowing thickly. Herbert was looking away again, face still flushed slightly. Dan wondered momentarily if it was from anger still, or if it was now from embarrassment at being earnest. He shook his head slightly - it didn’t matter. That was something he could think about later. He needed to start by addressing the immediate subject at hand.

“No reagent, then,” he said softly. 

“Good.” 

“For either of us,” Dan added, and Herbert once again fixed his gaze upon him, brows knit between confusion and accusation.

“It’s not - you’re not just some experiment, Herbert.” Dan could tell that his own face was a matching rosy hue, though he once again steered himself away from reading too far into it. Not now. “There’s more to you than just some data to be collected. I won’t let you kill yourself with this.”

Herbert looked at him with a slight frown, searching his face. Dan wondered what he found written there. 

After a long moment, Herbert let out a small huff, and Dan thought he was about to start their fight back up, but instead, he said, “Fine”. 

“Fine?” Dan asked, unbelieving. He’d meant it, that he didn’t want Herbert to ruin himself like this, but he hadn’t really expected that Herbert would go for it. 

“Yes, _fine_ , Dan,” Herbert snapped, but Dan noticed with a far-off warmth that he’d slipped back into calling him “Dan” instead of “Daniel”. 

Dan swallowed, mouth still dry from sleep. He realized that his hands were still on Herbert, one holding his wrist and one on the edge of his sleeve where it was pushed up his forearm. He moved his hands away, sliding the one on Herbert’s wrist down to squeeze his hand before pulling away completely. Herbert closed his eyes, leaving his arm hanging between them for a moment before letting it fall to his side.

“Alright.”

They stood there for a long, lasting moment in silence. They would have to talk about what exactly this meant, but Dan didn’t want to. He was tired; he’d woken up and been thrown directly into the fire, and he needed some coffee before he would be ready to unpack what this new agreement meant for him and Herbert. He would _definitely_ need coffee to even begin thinking about the warmth that had seeped into the conversation. The burning heat of anger that they’d started with had simmered down to something much less violent, like the kiss of the sun on your face when you first step outside, or the cozy warmth of your blankets in the cold morning. 

It was _much_ scarier. 

Dan sighed, taking a step back from Herbert, who was looking dutifully at the floor. 

Coffee. Definitely.

He’d taken a few achey steps towards the stairs when Hebert’s voice broke the quiet.

“Thank you.”

It was stilted and awkward, as though he was out of practice using the phrase. Dan figured he probably was; Herbert wasn’t exactly the pinnacle of good manners, but despite the awkwardness, there was an earnestness there that caught Dan off guard. He’d witnessed more emotion from Herbert in the past twenty minutes that he usually would in a week, maybe two, and it was entirely unmapped terrain. So was the light pink on Herbert’s usually pale face, and Dan found that both the emotion and the flush suited him. He wasn’t entirely sure which part Herbert was thinking him for - letting the conversation drop there momentarily? Reassuring him that he was human, not just some experiment? Forcing him to promise he would stop injecting unpredictable and untested solutions into his body? 

It didn’t really matter, ultimately, if he was thanking Dan for some or all of it. He paused at the bottom of the stairs, looking at Herbert - who was looking interested in the concrete wall - over his shoulder. 

“Of course,” Dan said finally, and he was surprised to find that it was fully genuine, because what else could it be, at this point?

_Of course._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay so this took a while to get through but i am already 2k into the next and i believe final chapter of this fic so ideally i'll get it done in the next week before i go back to classes!!! leave me a comment if you wanna make my day :') i'll be back with the next update hopefully soon, find me on tumblr at ispyspookymansion in the meantime!


End file.
